There is a two story tower, is that the only building? It is two stories as in one above the 15ft walls and one below, or is it two stories above the 15ft, so probably 3 stories total? What about the "ruins of the two watch towers" are there three towers, and two of them are broken, are there two, and one of them is the two story one and the other one is broken? Are there any windows besides the one emitting light? Can Velzhar go down the stairs while I go in a window and Zeph goes through the floor?_________________

"DSMatticus" wrote:

Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

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"FrankTrollman" wrote:

Really, the only thing the "my character can beat up your character" challenges ever do by presenting a clear and unambiguous beat down is to have the loser drop of the thread and pretend the challenge never happened.

"Frank Trollman" wrote:

But just because the character should have something defined into their play space that allows them to contribute to the situations that the game expects to demand of them, doesn't mean that those contributions should be exactly the same action every time. Indeed, at the point in which the other players can essentially memorize your character's actions and repeat them verbatim whether you're in the room or not - your design has failed.

I've only read through DC 30, because that's what I rolled, but I'm going to call bullshit anyway.

Because you know, when the hobgoblin on the roof stops making noise, the only possible reason is because there is an entire enemy team attacking so you better have your entire set of bodyguards that were all inexplicably in the room with you respond by laying an ambush, but not send anyone upstairs to check._________________

"DSMatticus" wrote:

Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

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"FrankTrollman" wrote:

Really, the only thing the "my character can beat up your character" challenges ever do by presenting a clear and unambiguous beat down is to have the loser drop of the thread and pretend the challenge never happened.

"Frank Trollman" wrote:

But just because the character should have something defined into their play space that allows them to contribute to the situations that the game expects to demand of them, doesn't mean that those contributions should be exactly the same action every time. Indeed, at the point in which the other players can essentially memorize your character's actions and repeat them verbatim whether you're in the room or not - your design has failed.

Last edited by Kaelik on Sat Dec 26, 2015 7:29 am; edited 1 time in total

Besides the screaming stopping, there was also the whole "summon wind with enough strength to insta-crush a regular Joe to death against the floor". Unless I missed the bit in the Elemental Syphon abilities where their attacks never make any noise.

Plus Alarm is a 1st level wizard/sorceror spell.

The guards were on the room to the side all along, only one creature was on the lower tower room and went to the guard's room, in case my description wasn't clear on that. Hobgoblin tactics teaches them to don't try to go check bone-crushing sounds on their own.

Oh they heard wind. That explains everything. I also react to wind with murder.

I'll just put down a note that all monsters will always get a surprise round on us in all fights because maglag has decided that enemies put Alarm spells in all possible locations and walk around muttering passwords every step, and that they also Nistul's Magic Aura every single alarm trap so that the guy who has always one Arcane Sight can't see it._________________

"DSMatticus" wrote:

Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

"FrankTrollman" wrote:

Really, the only thing the "my character can beat up your character" challenges ever do by presenting a clear and unambiguous beat down is to have the loser drop of the thread and pretend the challenge never happened.

"Frank Trollman" wrote:

But just because the character should have something defined into their play space that allows them to contribute to the situations that the game expects to demand of them, doesn't mean that those contributions should be exactly the same action every time. Indeed, at the point in which the other players can essentially memorize your character's actions and repeat them verbatim whether you're in the room or not - your design has failed.

Last edited by Kaelik on Sat Dec 26, 2015 3:16 pm; edited 1 time in total

It has come to my attention that you at character gen replaced Arcane Sight with See invis. That you did this when no characters submitted a Rogue, and then didn't pick a Rogue, and now your basic plan is to declare "Alarm is a first level spell" as your excuse for why a party that has no ability to detect or bypass alarm is forced to ambushed over and over again by every enemy for the rest of the campaign, even though the party has almost no method of detecting alarms in the first place...

Look, you are a bad DM who doesn't understand that what makes the players most miserable isn't the same thing as what the monsters would do. You are just super gung ho on never letting us bypass anything so you are mad that we didn't walk in the front gate and fight our way through, and so you arbitrarily declare that they get advance notice and force us to fight through them all anyway.

Alarm could be a 9th level spell and you'd just make up some other dumb reason after the fact, because not allowing us to bypass anything ever is more important to you than even a modicum of sanity. So yes, just keep declaring that the enemy uses traps against a party that at the time of selection literally could not detect the traps in any way because of nerfs you made.

You are a terrible DM and I quit._________________

"DSMatticus" wrote:

Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

"FrankTrollman" wrote:

Really, the only thing the "my character can beat up your character" challenges ever do by presenting a clear and unambiguous beat down is to have the loser drop of the thread and pretend the challenge never happened.

"Frank Trollman" wrote:

But just because the character should have something defined into their play space that allows them to contribute to the situations that the game expects to demand of them, doesn't mean that those contributions should be exactly the same action every time. Indeed, at the point in which the other players can essentially memorize your character's actions and repeat them verbatim whether you're in the room or not - your design has failed.

Last edited by Kaelik on Sun Dec 27, 2015 3:34 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hmmm, the party was quite capable of detecting an Alarm even without Arcane Sight. Your character was a wizard, meaning they get all cantrips, which includes Detect Magic, which has a bigger range than Alarm.

Having a rogue wouldn't have changed anything, since Alarm isn't actually a trap by the rules. A rogue cannot search/disable an alarm spell anymore that they can detect/disable an acid fog with the invisible metamagic. Contrast with, for example, fire trap, that's a spell that explicitly says it is a trap. Another example of "casters rule, everybody else drools" in D&D. Anyway it's not like the party activated any traps so far.

I find it particularly unfair your claim about never letting you bypass anything, as you basically strolled past the hydra encounter without any trouble. The level 5 character with greater blink has also always been able to go through walls and ceilings all the time, I never threw a "haha there's a wall of force there!".

If you had used detect magic (you were flying into what you knew to be an enemy gathering point after all, and your interrogation after the 1st battle revealed there would be at least one arcane caster), you would've been able to detect the alarm, most probably identify it correctly with a spellcraft check, and then either dispel it, or have the greater blink character go around its limits.

Or you could just retreat now that you know the enemy is alerted. Or something else. You're not being forced into fighting the next room.

Last edited by maglag on Sun Dec 27, 2015 4:33 pm; edited 6 times in total

Your character was a wizard, meaning they get all cantrips, which includes Detect Magic, which has a bigger range than Alarm.

If you had used detect magic (you were flying into what you knew to be an enemy gathering point after all, and your interrogation after the 1st battle revealed there would be at least one arcane caster), you would've been able to detect the alarm, most probably identify it correctly with a spellcraft check, and then either dispel it, or have the greater blink character go around its limits.

1) My character didn't have detect magic when you nerfed the souldborn and picked the characters.

2) I didn't fucking detect magic because I didn't know you fucking nerfed the soulborn "for simplicity" so you could give all the enemies surprise rounds forever.

maglag wrote:

The level 5 character with greater blink has also always been able to go through walls and ceilings all the time, I never threw a "haha there's a wall of force there!".

And then made it completely pointless that he ever did that.

maglag wrote:

Or you could just retreat now that you know the enemy is alerted. Or something else. You're not being forced into fighting the next room.

Yes, let's leave so you can set up a more elaborate bullshit ambush with the enemies getting more actions! After all, they will completely forget we came here, and not burn the entire fortress to the ground and then run away, because they have proven to have only sane reactions so far, and definitely not super overreactions._________________

"DSMatticus" wrote:

Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

"FrankTrollman" wrote:

Really, the only thing the "my character can beat up your character" challenges ever do by presenting a clear and unambiguous beat down is to have the loser drop of the thread and pretend the challenge never happened.

"Frank Trollman" wrote:

But just because the character should have something defined into their play space that allows them to contribute to the situations that the game expects to demand of them, doesn't mean that those contributions should be exactly the same action every time. Indeed, at the point in which the other players can essentially memorize your character's actions and repeat them verbatim whether you're in the room or not - your design has failed.

How about quickloading back to before we assault the place and giving Kaelik Arcane Sight and Darth Detect Magic and me Wall of Force?

I didn't have Arcane Sight in the first place, that was Darth.

Nor do I particularly want to play a game in which the "solution" to the fact that every single square of every single location is alarmed is that I spend 40 minutes casting dispel over and over so that they can hear us anyway and still get the surprise rounds that maglag has decided are essential to his DMing._________________

"DSMatticus" wrote:

Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

"FrankTrollman" wrote:

Really, the only thing the "my character can beat up your character" challenges ever do by presenting a clear and unambiguous beat down is to have the loser drop of the thread and pretend the challenge never happened.

"Frank Trollman" wrote:

But just because the character should have something defined into their play space that allows them to contribute to the situations that the game expects to demand of them, doesn't mean that those contributions should be exactly the same action every time. Indeed, at the point in which the other players can essentially memorize your character's actions and repeat them verbatim whether you're in the room or not - your design has failed.

Last edited by Kaelik on Tue Dec 29, 2015 4:02 pm; edited 1 time in total

This is the 3rd/4th battle you're in (depending if you count the hobgoblin at the top of the tower as a separate battle), and in none the enemy got the surprise round. First battle you noticed each other and the party got the first shots, 2nd battle again you spotted the hydra before reaching the bridge and just dropped your spells on it from a safe distance, 3rd you caught the hobgoblin at the tower top completely by surprise and he never got a single action begore being gibbed, and now you're hearing the enemies in the next room so they wouldn't get a surprise round either.

But ok, if Alarm pisses you off that much, I'm willing to quickload back a few moments and promising to never use that spell again, nor similar ones. Any other kind of spell that would particularly bother you so that I can make sure the NPCs never use it?

Last edited by maglag on Tue Dec 29, 2015 4:20 pm; edited 5 times in total

This is the 3rd/4th battle you're in (depending if you count the hobgoblin at the top of the tower as a separate battle), and in none the enemy got the surprise round. First battle you noticed each other and the party got the first shots, 2nd battle again you spotted the hydra before reaching the bridge and just dropped your spells on it from a safe distance, 3rd you caught the hobgoblin at the tower top completely by surprise and he never got a single action begore being gibbed, and now you're hearing the enemies in the next room so they wouldn't get a surprise round either.

But ok, if Alarm pisses you off that much, I'm willing to quickload back a few moments and promising to never use that spell again, nor similar ones. Any other kind of spell that would particularly bother you so that I can make sure the NPCs never use it?

Planar Binding comes to mind.

But more seriously, you are counting as a battle that the enemy didn't get a surprise round the exact moment that apparently Zeph entered an alarm circle. Counting a CR 1/4 creature that exists for the sole purpose of alerting an entire EL 10 compound of our assault as a "battle" we didn't get fucked by is a joke.

I think it's possible for the enemies to use alarm reasonably, but given the fact that we have absolutely no knowledge of how they used it, and the fact that you specifically erased one classes ability to detect alarms, and so I had no fucking idea that he couldn't see them, and then just had us magically trigger an alarm that they put in the exact location that an enemy was standing, meaning that apparently all the enemies everywhere are standing in alarm circles, I have no reason to expect you to be using the them reasonably, since that's probably more spells than a Sorcerer even gets, and there is no intelligible principle that puts an alarm spell in the same location as an enemy._________________

"DSMatticus" wrote:

Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

"FrankTrollman" wrote:

Really, the only thing the "my character can beat up your character" challenges ever do by presenting a clear and unambiguous beat down is to have the loser drop of the thread and pretend the challenge never happened.

"Frank Trollman" wrote:

But just because the character should have something defined into their play space that allows them to contribute to the situations that the game expects to demand of them, doesn't mean that those contributions should be exactly the same action every time. Indeed, at the point in which the other players can essentially memorize your character's actions and repeat them verbatim whether you're in the room or not - your design has failed.

Last edited by Kaelik on Tue Dec 29, 2015 4:41 pm; edited 1 time in total

Again, I'll point out that your interrogation after your 1st battle revealed the enemy here has at least one arcane caster in their ranks, a sorceror.

As for the alarm location, it's less of a matter "where an enemy was standing" and more a matter of "one of the tower's two entrances". Since as you suspect, the dude on top was very low CR and thus wouldn't be able to spot/hear any half-decent scout/rogue sneaking up the tower to try to get inside, avoiding the main gates.

Last edited by maglag on Tue Dec 29, 2015 4:54 pm; edited 1 time in total

Again, I'll point out that your interrogation after your 1st battle revealed the enemy here has at least one arcane caster in their ranks, a sorceror.

Again, I'll point out that I thought Darth had Arcane Sight. I can't possibly stress that no matter how many times you insist that I use a standard action every 60ft to detect alarms that Darth can automatically see from 120ft, it will still be the case that so long as I thought Darth had Arcane Sight there was no reason for me to use the cantrips that have a duration of CONCENTRATION to see alarms, because then I would have to start yelling and then have zero standard fucking actions forever to be able to keep detecting alarms.

maglag wrote:

As for the alarm location, it's less of a matter "where an enemy was standing" and more a matter of "one of the tower's two entrances". Since as you suspect, the dude on top was very low CR and thus wouldn't be able to spot/hear any half-decent scout/rogue sneaking up the tower to try to get inside, avoiding the main gates.

So all I had to do was cast Detect Magic at the bottom of the mountain, give up all standard actions, stand within line of sight of the enemy inside the alarm, spend a standard action detecting the alarm, spend a standard action yelling while I cast dispel magic, so that he hears me, alerts his allies, who also might hear me, then the alarm would be gone, my detect magic would be gone, the enemies would be alerted, and I would have four spell slots left to fight the EL 10 encounter that is now alerted to our presence because I was yelling in sight of a hobgoblin, even though even if I have six spell slots, the encounter as defined in the book would basically have a 100% chance of TPKing our party if we don't clear it by stealth, and since you took the First encounter and made a Tome Fighter with +Texas to saves, I can only assume that every enemy is individually more powerful than the encounter I already know will murder us even if I did have six spell slots instead of 4._________________

"DSMatticus" wrote:

Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

"FrankTrollman" wrote:

Really, the only thing the "my character can beat up your character" challenges ever do by presenting a clear and unambiguous beat down is to have the loser drop of the thread and pretend the challenge never happened.

"Frank Trollman" wrote:

But just because the character should have something defined into their play space that allows them to contribute to the situations that the game expects to demand of them, doesn't mean that those contributions should be exactly the same action every time. Indeed, at the point in which the other players can essentially memorize your character's actions and repeat them verbatim whether you're in the room or not - your design has failed.

Last edited by Kaelik on Tue Dec 29, 2015 6:09 pm; edited 1 time in total